Pallid
by HartxStarr
Summary: He feels nothing and, Law decides, that's the worst feeling of all. - Post-Apocalypse type AU (or, the years following)
1. Chapter 1

Pain. All he remembers is pain for the longest time. Constant pain; blinding and burning, the bone deep kind of pain that left him crying until he felt nothing left but the curdling of his own blood buried deep down within his system, ripping him and tearing him to pieces, bit by antagonizing bit. A pain so intense it eventually dulled to the back-burner of his mind until he felt nothing at all; the faint ringing in his ears and the blunt annoyance of tripping over his own numb feet only a vague sensation as he trotted past pine and fir.

Numb, like his insides. Numb, like his skin, blotted and speckled with snowy-white patches littering his entire being.

He remembers the whiteness, too, he realizes — an overabundance of it. White for the flowers that danced in the window bed, white for the earth, and white for the trees that shifted in the breeze, the lawn across the street. White for the ore cemented in every available surface; the roads and the walls, the pedways and the fountains — he remembers white in the water too, flowing and dotting with a shimmer of its own.

He comes back to himself in waves and finds that he doesn't know where he is. Doesn't know who he is after having cried away the last remainder of his sorrow, tossing back the lives he remembers fleeing, stained in stark red.

Red, he remembers red. Vivid and bold, splattered over the lace-white tiles and cloudy pavement. Red like blood and, Law realizes, it really was blood that he saw amongst the flames and the smoke, the bullets flying through the air. Blood that shed, and blood that fell without the controlled effort that he knows can be done by; he's seen a lot of blood before. Where had all of it come from?

Flexing his fingers — he still can't feel them — he decides to stop and think. He's out of breath, he realizes, by insistent moving or wallowing cries, he doesn't know. He eventually finds a seat of fallen lumber and shuts his eyes tightly, willing himself to feel anything at all.

He feels nothing.

He feels nothing and, Law decides, that's the worst feeling of all.

Everything's gone. Everything and everyone he's ever known is gone; the life that he can never return to and the books he can never finish. The games he can play and the songs he could learn.

His sister liked his singing. He doesn't know if he was ever any good at it but his mother had always assured him, had taught him every song she knew. His father never sang, always offered up Law in his place when asked, a playful betrayal. Was it always going to be this hard thinking of it all in past tense?

He felt like crying again, but found he couldn't shed a single tear. He tried to will them into existence only because sadness was an emotion and he wanted desperately to feel again, to sense the tears running down his cheeks in endless streams that never stopped, pouring out of him until he woke up from this nightmare that became of him.

He looked up. The sun was starting to rise, maybe. He couldn't really tell, thick branches covered in pointy needles made up the majority of the sky — he's never been so surrounded by trees before. Never been surrounded by so much green and brown, neutral, earthen shades.

He grew up with white, so much white. Blinding white. White like the pages of the medical journals he read, white like his parent's lab coats. _Their lab coats,_ burnt to a crisp now, likely gone in the wind. Maybe white is what killed them, every last soul he remembers; absorbing them and feeding off of them until there was nothing left of them to take, nothing left but their lives to give for the price they paid.

The price he paid, still paying. His hands were shaking. His hands, dotted and dipped in milky white, leeching and devouring. He supposes they should be hurting — supposes his whole body should be hurting. But, as it was, he sat, shaking. Empty.

He wonders for how long he could make it. Wonders if he'll pass out from the stress and strain and wake from the excruciating pain he must be feeling. He wonders if he'll wake up at all. He doesn't know if he wants to; let him swim in his comatose, his forest where the sun can't reach him and the woodsy scent that drowned out the reminder of what burning flesh smelt like.

The timberland could house him until he figured out what to do, where to go. He was lost in all sense of the word.

He wonders if it was his fault. He wishes it was his fault, maybe they would have taken only him instead.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a quiet illness at first, claiming one at the edge of town, another two over. Unnoticed and unidentified until it was too late — and even then, there wasn't anything anyone could have done but wait as it devoured them all, bodies and souls, bleaching their skin and leaving fire in its wake (figuratively and literally; their pale patches burned just as badly as the inferno the World Goverment unleashed, never ending pain consuming until the very last breath was drawn, Flevance down and rumors spread world-over).

His sister wasn't the first in the family to show symptoms — but then again, no one would have known with how his father held himself in his office with his studies and theories, his trial and errors. He emerged from his chambers one day and Law saw it, the angle of his brows and the look in his eyes, and he knew there was no hope; none for his sister, and none for his father now that he's seen him.

Despite it all, with the terror raging behind closed curtains, past their hospitals walls, into the town below, he assured Lami that the noise outside was one of joy, easing her back to bed and into a fitful bout of sleep, humming to her softly.

(He didn't sing — didn't ever sing in those times for fear of lulling her into a deeper, unwaking rest.

 _Let me be selfish,_ he thought. _She isn't my patient but my sister, let me have her for a little while longer, please._ And he didn't know who he begged, but he knew whoever they were weren't listening as he watched his home burn and collapse, first red like roses, then blue with flame.)


	3. Chapter 3

It took him a while to regain a semblance of his sense of being, and even longer for him to notice that he was hungry — _starving,_ and, Law realized, he's never been hungry before in his entire life; not even when Flevance tumbled into it's downfall — hurtled, more accurately — and, technically speaking, he probably should have realized his predicament long ago, considering that he had his head sorted out long enough to stare at his reflection in a calm stream for— gods, _hours_ now.

That wasn't to say that he was all right in any sense of the word, but he was okay enough to take in his stature — a child, no older than ten, filthy from muck and blood, clothes ragged and ruined. He spent a considerable amount of time blankly searching his own face, his hands; pale, blotchy areas of depigmented skin appeared all over his body and he knew they would be aching a lot more than they were if not for the fact that his brain decided to lock him into a sort of semi-numb state, letting him feel without actually _feeling,_ allowing him only the mere vaguest of sensations.

Turning his head revealed a small lock of hair bleached white where it fell near his left ear, the surrounding skin just as pale, and another, less noticeable tuff at the nape of his neck, collateral damage where it blotted near his throat, spilling to the sides.

He realized he was standing _in_ the stream rather than _near_ it and he sloshed back to the bank to sort his thoughts out a little more.

He remembers a little more clearly now; his vitiligo — not specifically _vitiligo,_ his mind weakly supplied, but that was all he could manage for the time being — was caused by the concentrated levels of amber lead in his system, and while he can't physically be cured, his father was always adamant that there was a way to extract the lead, cut his eventual demise away. Had he more time, Law was sure that the man would had found the solution, but, as it was, his father was long gone, as was the rest of his beautiful country.

 _Beautiful,_ Law thought bitterly, _how can a place of tragedy be considered beautiful?_

The White City was his home — emphasis on _was_ — burned and gunned to the ground; Law was still surprised that he made it out alive. Discarding the indescribable feeling of not being fully there ( _like a blur,_ Law thinks, _but I'm the blur. Like being in fog, like I'm floating — a ghost, here but not really here),_ he supposed that if he wanted to survive any longer than he has, he's ought to find edible substance of some kind.

But that was the thing — there was no fridge out in the wilderness, no cabinets, no drawers, nothing to hold food, or even the utensils to eat with. No way to cleanse water for drinking, or a way to store and carry it. He didn't have anything at all; nowhere to go, and nowhere to return to.

Flevance had been a country of little to no extremities; a temperate climate and no notable landscape features besides a mountain range used as the starting point of its borders. With a contrast of rural towns and urban cities, most of the country was dominated by meadows and grassland; and the woodland was small and scattered throughout the region. The thought of frolicking about a dense forest was more of a fantasy of his sisters than his — and even then, it was a _fantasy,_ never any real desire but a child's daydream — so to say that Law had absolutely no idea as to what to do was the understatement of the century.

He was lost and, truthfully, he hadn't the faintest clue as to how he crossed his countrys borders hidden within the mountain range he's surely ventured; because Flevance didn't house pinewood such as this — where the trees grew so high they reached the heavens and all he could see were trees, and dirt, and grass.

 _This,_ he thought bleakly, _can be considered beautiful. Beautiful in a 'I'm going to kill you' sort of way, but whatever._

He began patting himself down, checking his pockets, his back, the slip in his shirt, even his socks, needlessly proving to himself that he had absolutely nothing to his name.

 _Well,_ Law thought, and made to leave it at that before the sudden need for human conversation overtook him and found noone but himself for miles and miles. _What do I do now?_

It was a tremendous change, too sudden for his liking, too different for his tastes, but he eventually found it in him to put one lucid foot in front of the other and began his journey of no destination. A trek down a mountainside he never in his life imagined he'd be making — much less alone.

The uncontrollable trembling shimmered down until only his hands shook, and while his sense of touch slowly returned, the numb sensation of existing through a glass windowpane did not.

The pain of his blotches persisted, but through labored breaths and tired feet, he stubbornly ignored it until it was an afterthought in his mind, tucked beneath his floating, ghost-like wakefulness; and he lost track of how long he walked — whether it was hours or days — but the only warning his feeble body gave him of collapse was a hitch in his step before he found himself tumbling down a rather steep incline, falling face down in a meadow-clearing of the woods.

He laid like that for quite a while (honestly, he was fighting the ever present urge to take a long nap, but he remembered that sleeping off a potential head injury could result in death— but then again, _that_ was also a regularly tempting thought) and he sighed deeply and exhaustedly before limply peeling his face out of the dirt and blinked in his surroundings.

More trees, and dirt, and grass.

The only exceptional thing of note was the break in the forest he sat in, and the little wildflowers that basked in the warm sunlight. And it was _weird_ seeing flowers besides the brilliant white ones of his country — and even if they weren't stained white, they were often fleckled — so he continued to sit in the grass for a moment more, squinting at a bloom his sister might have liked (a bright and bold sort of pink, and, dare he say, resembling that of a simplistic heart-like shape; though, again, his sister probably would have likened a more snowy one, but) when suddenly he heard a disturbance in the otherwise peaceful atmosphere.

He barely had enough time to look up before he was snatched into the air and relentlessly patted down and turned this way and that, at one point being turned upside down — and he was still reeling from the shock of what exactly was happening when he heard the voice.

" _Are you okay?"_

He was rightened rather quickly and, between the vertigo, Law found that he was being held by— a person. It was hard taking in said person when he was being held awfully close to their face, like he was being inspected and, Law realized, he _was_ being inspected.

"Uh," was all he managed to get out before the only person he's seen in who knows how long physically manhandled him in midair.

"I saw you fall! You weren't moving— but then you were— but then you weren't—" Law decided he didn't like this person. "Are you okay? Where," and they swept their eyes across his form once more, "where does it hurt?"

 _I'm pretty sure I hit my head on the way down,_ is what Law should have said which, of course, is what he _didn't_ say.

What he said instead was, "Put me down."

He wasn't let down. Instead, he got a gasp in return and turned violently so as his forehead could be examined, as if he had voiced his inner musings.

" _You're bleeding."_

He didn't know what prompted him to say, "I'm fine," but it probably had something to do with, "I want down." And when the person holding him seemed inclined to reach into their large backpack one handed and pull out a roll of gauze, Law repeated, more curtly, " _Put me down!"_

After having not put him down, and instead unprofessionally started wrapping the gauze around his apparent head wound, they glanced around the surrounding area a grand total of three times before cutting their eyes back to him; brows furrowed and mouth pursed.

"Where are your parents?"

The sincerity of the question hit him harder than any heartache that found him, and for a moment all Law did was stare. He stared for a considerable amount of time it seemed, as the one still holding him gave him a look Law couldn't quite decipher and said, "You're a child."

That, at least, prompted a, "Huh?"

"You're a child," they repeated. "What are you doing out here all alone?"

It was a look of pity now that he got, like he couldn't take care of himself (and gods, Law didn't want to admit that he _couldn't_ take care of himself, not out here, not in the land of the trees where he's only ever heard vague stories about — which are most likely exaggerated at best, but not any less dangerous, not any less _different_ from his home country and hospital gates. His city walls and Government owned sanctuary— but they didn't want him now did they, had left ruin to Flevance and ashes of its people, and Law _still_ couldn't understand why _he_ had to be the one to survive — not his mother or his father, not even his little sister, and he failed at the _most important thing—)_ like he was the mere child that they saw, still dazed and confused. And _alone._

Law's never felt so alone before.

All at once, the tears that he couldn't find before started pouring out of him, nearly choking him on the sob that broke loose in the quiet meadow; and before he knew it, the stranger held him closer, him still in their arms but now engulfed by them, tucking his squall into their shoulder as he bawled and wailed.

And he didn't know them, but he held on to them, _clung_ to them, like his life depended on it because he had no one else, nobody around to turn to, nothing but the hollow feeling inside of him that only expanded with each wallowing breath he took.

He didn't know how he'd feel about it later, when he'd look back and find embarrassment or something else, but all he knew was that he wouldn't have stopped even if he wanted to — _couldn't_ , because the simple kindness of _being there_ was all he could have asked of the stranger as they held him tightly, letting him soak their shirt in saltwater tears.


	4. Chapter 4

He found an old journal tucked between the novels in one of the bookcases in a more quieter corner of the hospital library once. It was a small, curious thing bound in leather with no embellishments to speak of, pages frayed and weathered from use and— well, the _weather_ from the looks of it. And as he thumbed through it, Law found that it was written with as much excitement as it was disclosed, forgoing dates and numbers, all thoughts and feeling; a log detailing the events of a journey through a land described as forest-ridden, overgrown and unadministered by the Government.

He found it fascinating and awe inspiring for all the ten minutes he had for himself until his mother had found where he'd hidden himself, taking him by the hand as she walked him the three blocks to his school (she had to see him off — if she didn't physically see him enter the threshold he would never go).

When he asked about the journal later, his mother had tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and told him that she had misplaced the thing, thanking him for finding it and spiriting it away in a drawer in her room.

He didn't think much of it at the time, and as the years passed it easily slipped his mind — but thinking back on it now, the journal was his first introduction on what awaited him in the land of the trees. Law found it all coming back to him now; the words that looked so much like his mother's, yet sounded like a completely different person (almost, if he thought about it, like Lami. But that couldn't be possible, as she was a third of his age at the time, him only a year into his schooling, too young for the adventure described, too small for a journey the journal unfolded).

 _I've arrived in the Land of the Trees (cool name, right?) and it's the most beautiful place I've ever seen!_

 _From the looks of things, the trees has had_ _countless years to flourish in all its green freedom and glory — I've never seen so much green before. Sometimes I look up and can't even see the sun, that's how many trees there are!_

 _The more I hike, the more I see different varieties of plant life, and the trees even start to make way for other species, pine to oak, to types I don't even recognize (and can't name — oops)._

 _Fauna are surprisingly docile._

 _There seems to be past signs of life the deeper into the woods I go (that also sounds pretty cool, high five, me), and it makes me wonder if the trees predate the lives that were once here or not._

 _The people I've met are friendly, for the most part. They appreciate what they have, and don't ever grieve what they don't._

 _That's pretty cool._


End file.
